Paul Spicer

We were quite excited about that.

And my colleague, Paul Spicer, who was director of the festival, who's also a top-ranked composer himself and conductor and a wonderful man we were good friends with, Paul said, I'll go off to London and do some research and see who might be available to write this oratorio, either the libretto or the music.

And I said, well, if it's John's gospel, that's the basis.

We can make a new version of that.

I think you can.

Certainly the Easter one.

If you were to Google Paul Spicer Easter oratorio, I think you would find access to it.

And it has been recorded.

You may recall that last week's episode featured the music of Herbert Howells.

Our next composer, Paul Spicer, was one of Howells' students.

Spicer wrote this piece for organist Nigel Potts, who premiered it at Westminster Abbey.

Its title plays on one of Howell's own works titled Cerebond for the Twelfth Day of Any October, which Howell's dedicated to Rafe Vaughn Williams.

you Thank you.

Thank you.

We just heard Sarah Bond for Any Third October by Paul Spicer, a pupil of Herbert Howells.

Nigel Potts was the organist.

In the hands of God, in the hands of God.

Music for St Cecilia's Day by today's composer Gerald Finsey, God Is Gone Up, the words by Edward Taylor and the performance there, appropriately enough, The Finsey Singers directed by Paul Spicer.

What was your first experience of his music? How were you first introduced to it? Pretty early on for me, so when I was at school, I started doing the usual stuff that a mid-teenager would do, singing my Where Are You Walks and all those Caccini arias and the 24 Italian aria books and all that kind of stuff.

Amarilli Miabella or that kind of stuff.